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The Adjustment Bureau and How to View the World: Free Will vs. Predestination

Amanda and I recently saw The Adjustment Bureau and it really got me thinking about some big theological concepts. First of all, however, it is a spectacular movie to watch. The world David Norris (Matt Damon) and Elise Sellars (Emily Blunt) occupy is a stark one. It is the city, made of concrete, rigid pillars, highly structured politics, and plenty of police and authority figures. Norris is a rising young politician who is being groomed for the Presidency but is currently running for Senate. Elise is a dancer. They meet in a bathroom after Norris is defeated, but the chaos of Elise Sellars and their mutual attraction, inspires him to give a candid rather than scripted speech. Slowly, however, you find that even that random encounter is not random. There are agents assigned to great people (the movie hints that they are a sort of angelic force who watches over humanity). When Norris’s watcher slips up and misses an opportunity to make him spill coffee and miss a bus – Norris meets Elise a second time, they flirt, and Damon begins to reorient his life. The watchers look in their book of plans and see their characters off course. That wasn’t supposed to happen. (The Predestined begin to make their own lives).

Next – a whole new world is opened. Agents take Norris to a different dimensional warehouse for interrogation. From this point on Norris is aware that he has to live rigidly according to plan, that his life and Elise’s will not reach their full potential unless he stays away from her, and that if he purposely defies or reveals the existence of the Agency, his mind will be erased and he will fall into obscurity and insanity.

This is where the movie gets into the kind of mind warping that the movie Inception brought about. Doors are revealed that if opened using a certain hat, they warp the agents from spot to spot. They are not omnipresent and they can’t control everything, however they have different degrees of skill in bringing about “The Plan”. They are extremely hierarchical and they employ “riot police”. They are also afraid of upsetting the top tier of The Agency, including the Top Dog who appears to be God himself.

To be honest, this is a scary version of the world. It presents the very basics of the concept of Predestination in theology. That God has complete control and brings about His plans regardless of what we perceive to be choices. In this case, the agency is the wall that keeps us in our tracks.

Then, the concept of Free Will is broached with Damon’s character begins to break the tracks. God somehow loses control at times or gives up control to see if humanity can handle free will and make good happen. The breakout of the two world wars were told to be a Time with God allowed humanity a chance to live freely. We failed, and God took control back with the agency with this Gestapo like Angelic Super Squad with fashions stuck in the 50s.

In the end, Norris and Elise take the case all the way to the highest court – God Himself. Though God isn’t actually present, he has been watching the whole thing and when the two main characters break through everything in their path to stay together, God gives a report to the agents and allows their Plans to be removed, or changed. They win and God is pleased. You will have to see the movie to see how this whole thing plays out. I enjoyed it.

But it did make me uncomfortable in a lot of ways. One, God continues the Hollywood streak of being a hands off kind of being. The one who created everything allows an Agency to run the Created. The allowance of a Holy Spirit interacting in human affairs and moving the hearts of people isn’t directly part of the script.

Also – the negative view of humanity is devoid of the great good that people do every day. It just shows that we automatically assume that we are all sinful creatures with little hope of redemption. Very Calvinist. But theologically, Christ came to redeem creation and make it new and whole again. Being an optimist, I don’t see the world like this film portrays it. The world is full of hope because Christ came. The World Wars happened, but great forces of good stood up and Pushed against Evil, and the Axis fell and fell hard. The good folks who fought to bring freedom to the persecuted peoples of the world learned from the reconstruction mistakes in World War I and did things differently. The world has lived in the shadow of our greatest darkness and the greatest light since then. You can’t present the darkness of people’s hearts without recognizing that God originally created us for Good and His goodness in Christ transforms people from the inside out. We still mess up, but we are getting better!

I would love to hear how the film struck you. Do you feel the world is rigid like this? Do you feel that the world is merely being maintained? Or is the will of humanity being transformed and moving towards a better Kingdom – The Kingdom of God? I’d be interested in your thoughts.